Panang Curry

My second Cooking Kit from the Asian supermarket in Böblingen was a Curry. I added chicken, coconut milk and veggies.

The kit contained the red curry paste, dried lime leafs and crushed peanuts.

I served it mixed with Basmati rice. The cooking time was short. It just took the time the rice needed to cook.

It started with the coconut milk. The red curry paste went in and was cooked until the oil started to show at the top. Next followed the dried lime leaves. Then chicken and veggies. 

Now the additional water was added and brought back to boil. I cooked everyting for 5 min more.

The cooked rice and crushed peanuts, the Vietnamese coriander and whole peanuts finished the dish.

Ingredients:

250 g chicken thighs boneless

1 Panang Curry Meal Kit

1 green bell pepper

2 spring onions

200 ml coconut milk

240 ml water

50 g whole peanuts

2 stalks Vietnamese coriander

Thai Boat Noodles

During my short 3 day trip to Böblingen I checked out a huge Asian supermarket. My friend recommended it.

It is not an Asian chain supermarket, but independently owned. Less expensive then the one we have here in my hometown. That lead to a bigger purchase. 

I found some meal kits for Thai cooking. Since I am not so much in that type of kitchen, a spice package is welcome. I can taste the real food this way. The meal kit contained the base spice sauce, a small package of dry roasted garlic and 100 g of thin rice vermicelli noodles.

All other ingredients were fresh. I could choose the type of meat and used vegetables I could easily find. Together with the spiced sauce it tasted like Thai food from a take-out place.

Ingredients for 2:

1 meal-kit Thai Boat Noodles (sauce pack, freeze dried roasted garlic, rice vermicelli)

2 medium potatoes

2 onions caramelized, 1 green onion

2 stalks Vietnamese coriander

60 g sprouts

80 g baby spinach

200 g meat of your choice - I used pork neck

Sesame oil

Wash the potatoes and cut them in bite size pieces. Put them in the wok with salted water and cook them until they fall off a knife. Add the vermicelli to the water to get soft and blanch the spinach in the same water.

Drain. In a pan heat up sesame oil and brown the meat on the outside. It gets finished in the sauce later.

Pour 480 ml water in the pot and bring to a boil and empty the sauce pack in. Add the boiled potatoes, caramelized onions and the meat and cook for 5 min. Clean the sprouts and toss all that in with the other ingredients in.

Warm everything through. Fininsh with garlic flakes and coriander.

 

Pistacchio Cream

The viral Dubai Pistacchio Chocolate has soaked up all pistacchio creams available in shops. I even went to an Italian Supermarket where I was lucky a couple of month ago to get some.

On my way back home I bought pistacchios in their shell and sat down at my table to take off the shells. A lot to do and I calculated that a bag with 250 g would bring 150 g of pistacchios.

Sadly no, just 100 g. Luckily I had a small 50 g package of already shelled at home. 

To prepare the pistacchio cream you will need a strong foodprocessor or Thermomix.

Ingredients:

150 g cleaned pistacchios

1 large tablespoon icing sugar

190 ml whole milk

100 g white chocolate

30 g butter

Add pistacchios with sugar and 90 ml milk to the foodprocessor and mix well until you have some kind of paste. If it is still a little coarse, don't worry.

In a pot melt chocolate with butter and milk and cool it down a little. Add the pistacchio mix.

For a smoother texture put it back in the foodprocessor and give it a good mix.

Fill in some jar and put in the fridge over night.

It is interesting to check the ingredients listing on the pistacchio cream. When I read it I found lots of palm oil, thickeners and a lot less pistacchios than I thought. 

The homemade version is a lot nuttier.

Bozner Sauce with Asparagus and Papardelle

I read a blog from "Arthurs Tochter Kocht" and started to laugh out loud. The recipe is not funny at all, but the way she starts talking about the background of the recipe.

Alto Adige or Südtirol is the northern part of Italy bordering Austria. The recipe is an egg based sauce served with vegetables. In Spring with asparagus. There is no addition of cream or mayonaise. The boiled egg is separated and the egg white is the finishing touch of the sauce.

Boil 2 eggs for 10 min and put them in cold water to prevent a green ring around the yolk. Cut them open and put the egg yolks on a plate and smash them in to a paste. Put that in a high blender glass. Add mustard, vinegar and hot beef stock and season with salt and pepper.

Use a stick blender and make a paste. Now pour in the oil and stay on the bottom of the glass and start blending. Like a mayonaise it will rise and then lift the stick blender up and finish.

Pour in a bowl. Now chop the egg white very fine and cut up the chives. The egg white has to be very small - do not make egg salad!

Mix eggs and chives with the sauce and serve over asparagus.

Ingredients for the sauce:

2 eggs hardboiled

1 1/2 tsp mustard medium hot

2 tsp white balsamic vinegar

3 tbsp hot beef stock

Salt, pepper

110 ml grapeseed oil or sunflower oil

Chives with some chive flowers

Hang out at the Hotel Bar

I am staying at the V8 Hotel Superior at the Motorworld on the Stuttgart area in Böblingen.

Everything here is car themed. A huge showroom with Classic cars -restored old Mercedes Benz and the Mclaren Car Dealership are here on premesis. Cars are scattered all over the place. It is nice to hang out at the bar for a while in the evening.

The first two evenings I've tried spirits from the Bodensee region. Clear spirits from different fruits. 

On my last evening I let the bartender create a cocktail for me. Not in the drinks menu, but after 2 days he knew what I liked.

Williams Christ Pear is a very commonly used fruit to destill a wonderful clear spirit. Since I am not into sweet drinks, he created a Williams Christ Pear Sour for me.

Absolutely wonderful.

Last Dinner at the Motorworld

Today was my last day here in Böblingen. I am going home tomorrow.

I wanted a Swabian classic for my last dinner and went to Wichtel again. Wednesday evening I checked the menu and found Maultaschen: The Swabian Ravioli.

Served with fried onions in brown sauce and potato salad.

The filled pasta were two huge pieces. They contained a spinach and sausage minced filling with a little cheese in the middle.

Usually I am not the biggest fan of Swabian potato salad, often too much vinegar. But this one was very delicious.

A great last meal after a very wet and thunderstorm heavy afternoon.

I had the elderflower lemonade again.

 

Greek Restaurant Grüner Turm

In the old part of Böblingen you can find an old half -timbered house with a Greek restaurant. It is in business for more than 30 years.

The quality of the food and the amount of people beeing there on a Thursday at noon is speaking for itself. My friends have been celebrating family events here for many years.

The restaurant offers a wide variety of Greek dishes. Lots of starters and a long list of main courses. But the day my friend send me the link to this restaurant, I read the menu and knew what I wanted to eat.

This kind of preselecting dishes is so common right now. We all check the menus to decide what to eat before we even set a food inside the location. In the end even if I read thr menu in my hand at the table, I mostly stay with the dish I choose at home.

The server brought us each a shot glass with Uso,the Greek anisseed schnaps, and asked us what we wanted to drink. Uso on an empty stomach is not a recommondation.

Our food arrived on a black slate, nicely arranged. The Tsaziki lacked the garlic punch and reminded me more of a creamy cucumber salad, but a good one.

The gyros, the fries and the salad were awesome.

My friends husband had a mixed grill platter.

Motorworld Diner "Wichtel"

I am at the Motorworld in Böblingen, South East of Stuttgart.

Walking outside the car showrooms of Lamborghini and Bentley I stepped inside a rustic but nice looking diner. They have a brewery on site, because they sell Wichtel beers.

But no beer tonight. I went for elderflower lemonade.

A good crowd was inside, but the place is big. I grapped a table and the menu. On the way to my table I looked at some of the plates in front of guests. It looked promising.

There are a lot of "torten" on the menu - an other name for a pizza bottom. Choose between cream sauce, spinach sauce and tomato sauce. 

I choose a spinach sauce and went for grilled veggies and cheese. 

A good choice! Thin bottom, no soggy veggies and a good amount of cheese.  

 

Food at Car Museums

Today I started a 3 day trip with the main focus on cars. 

Two of the big players are in Stuttgart. My first stop at 9 AM opening time was the Porsche Museum. After a 2 hour very informative excebition, I needed some coffee and a sweet treat.

I treated myself to a very rich and moist chocolate muffin and a cappucchino.

Next I hit the road and fought my way through lots of road constructions and many tunnels and went to the Mercedes museum. This one is much bigger and the history started a lot earlier in the 1880.

Not only cars, busses, trucks are shown, the contempory history from industralisation, wars, depression and rise of a world wide car industry is very interesting to see.

That made me hungry again and I went to the onsite restaurant Berta's. Berta was the wife of Carl Benz and drove the Motorwagon over long distances. Her first drive was 100 kilometers in one day. To gas up the car, she bought fuel at pharmacy.

My fuel was a Swabian homestyle dish. Lentils with homemade noodles and Wiener sausages.

Hamshuka on white Bean Hummus

This is an Israeli dish.

Usually made with beef or lamb mince. But I choise the much leaner meat: turkey breast.

To start off my day in the kitchen, I opened a small can of chickpeas and peeled off the waxy skin from each of them. I have lots of problems to digest them in their whole form.

This is the reason I rarely use chickpeas. I bought a regular can of Borlotti beans. They build the mayor part of my hummus.

The ground turkey breast is already seasoned from the butcher. Brown it and throw in onions and garlic. I only added paprika, cumin, chili and tumeric to it. Hot paprika paste is better than tomato paste and goes great with the meat. The fresh herbs have gone in with the spices. The veg stock gets reduced down completely.

The Mediteranian kick comes from the Pomegranate syrup. That brings sweetness and a bit of tartness to it.

Recipe for Hamshuka:

350 g ground turkey breast

1 tbsp oilve oil

1 large onion, 4 garlic cloves

Salt, pepper, paprika, chili, cumin, tumeric

Fresh oregano, lovage, cellery leaves, thyme

2 tbsp pomegranate syrup

100 ml veg stock

2 tbsp hot paprika paste

Hummus:

small can chickpeas

regular can Borlotti beans

5 tbsp Tahini

1 tsp garlic paste

50 ml aqua faba

30 ml olive oil

juice 1/2 lemon

salt, pepper

Mushroom stew Tuscany style

Wow, I am a huge fan of this vegetarian dish. I only ate one of my High Protein Oat Breakfast Rolls with it.

The sauce with the spinach is prepared in my Thermomix. But the cheese left a burned bottom in the Thermomix. I had to toss in a dish washer tab to loosen it again.

Combining a sauce made in the Thermomix with the base ingredients in a pan is new to me. Usually I cook a complete meal in the Thermomix or use it as a steamer or blender.

I picked some fresh herbs from my pots on the balcony. That improved the taste of the base ingredients a lot.

Recipe:

300 g button mushrooms

200 g cherry tomatoes

1 tbsp olive oil

2 stalks majoram, 3 thyme, 2 basil stalks

Salt and pepper

Sauce:

80 g baby spinach

4 garlic cloves

2 tbsp tomato paste

40 g butter

120 g Creme fraiche

1 tsp hot smoked paprika

40 g Parmesan 

Clean the veggies and keep the mushrooms on the bigger side. Cut the cherry tomatoes just once. Start the olive oil in a wide pan and toss the mushrooms in. Give them 5 to 7 min. Stir after 3 min a bit. Then add the tomatoes and the fresh herbs.

In the Thermomix add chopped garlic, butter and tomato paste and on Varoma, 4 min, speed 1 sautee that. Add spinach, creme fraiche, Parmesan and hot smoked paprika and cook at 100 C, 5 min, left speed 1.

Pour the sauce in the pan and stir and finish with the basil and a little more cheese.

Asparagus wrapped in Kadayif

I needed a bit Kadayif or Angelhair dough for my viral Dubai pistacchio chocolate. The smallest size package had 400 g.

Now 325 g are still sitting in the package in the fridge. I pulled some of it out and wrapped it in a clean dishtowel with a wet kitchen paper in between. This is the only way to get it more malleable. 

A very tasty and easy lunch is asparagus. Blanched in boiling water for just 3 minutes was enough for the thin stalks. I made that hours in advance because I needed them cold. But only kadayif and asparagus together was not enough for me. 

A look in the fridge helped. Some Leerdamer cheese slices and very thin cut pork roast caught my eyes. Some sesame sauce as seasoning went well with the asparagus too.

Preheat the oven 180 C fan and use some baking paper.

Wrap 4 stalks of asparagus in a cheese slice and add some sesame dressing and pepper to it. Wrap the pork slice around it and then grab enough Kadayifi to put around it. Lay on top of the baking paper and spray some olive oil on top. 

Bake for 10 to 15 min until the Kadayfi has some color.